Mick's GeekBlog

Where’s the Tylenol?

Posted by Mick on May 11, 2010 – 10:55 pm

What a good day.

I slipped over the last several day. I said I was going to do more of the counting your blessings thing, but I haven’t been. I’ve been stressing. It doesn’t help that my mouth has been in near constant pain. Some of the pain is from the recent crown work I had done. I’ve got a temp crown on now, and I’m not sure if it’s still supposed to be this sensitive. The rest of the pain is coming from my jaw, which got a sharp jolt a few weeks ago. I’m starting to think that the crack I took was a little worse than I first thought, but that might just be my natural tendency towards hypochondria.

It’s ironic that the way I control my hypochondria is to avoid health care. The less i think about it, the less I obsess over it. I still think I’m sick, but as long as I don’t go to the doctor I can tell myself it’s just the hypochondria. Which only works some of the time, but that’s when procrastination comes into play, and the circle of rationalization is complete. But I digress.

The mouth pain is most likely a combination of all the factors, each of which builds upon itself. Having dental work always exacerbates my TMJ. My TMJ was already exacerbated from the crack on the jaw the previous week, so this round of “hold your mouth open extremely wide for extended periods of time while I torture you with expensive equipment” did double duty damage.

Pain is a funny thing. There are so many kinds of pain, but if you want to talk about real pain, severe pain, there are two kinds. There’s acute pain. Acute pain… like a fresh gash sliced in your flesh, a snapped leg, a kick in the stomach from a hob-nailed boot… acute pain is a bitch. It hurts hard. It’s sharp, it’s intense, it’s piercing. And then there’s chronic pain. Pain that’s there all day, every day, day after day, wearing at you, tearing you down little by little, like drops of water on a concrete slab. A single drop is nothing to a concrete slab. A million of them, one after the other, can chew a hole right through it.

And let’s offer a big thank you to the mold counts. I was getting tired of having functioning sinuses.

But those are just excuses. The blessings are still plentiful.

I was gifted with four wonderful pieces of art for the web site today. My spiritual brother Javier designed four icons for our main sections. You’ll see them standing proudly on the home page. What’s that? You wanted a teaser? I really shouldn’t, but… oh alright, you talked me into it.

I think it’s pretty awesome, And there are three more of them.

Tara and I drove to Lampasas tonight to pick up an antique chest of drawers we purchased on Sunday for an insanely low price. That meant we also got to stop and eat at Storms, the home of one of my favorite burgers, The Cordon Blue. A double meat hamburger with two slices of cheese and a slice of grilled ham in between. I’d drive the 60 miles to Lampasas just for the burger, the chest was a nice bonus. Actually, I have a bit of a penchant for old furniture. It doesn’t have to look good, in fact I prefer it to look well used. I like furniture with some character.

I’ve got a cast iron bed frame that’s well over 100 years old. And at some point, it was painted purple. It’s still purple. I don’t particularly like purple, but damn if it doesn’t give the bed some character.

I’m not sure where any of this was supposed to be going, but I definitely think we’ve arrived. Good night, and God Bless.